


Frost Dial

by willowydarling



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Romance, Everyone Is Gay, Gay Panic, M/M, Panic Attacks, Slow Burn Because I Love to Suffer, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 10:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13832616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowydarling/pseuds/willowydarling
Summary: Dan moves to a new town and immediately begins to feel the effects of loneliness after being separated from his friends. Shortly thereafter, he meets a boy just about his age called Phil.Phil seems different from anybody he has ever met before, and the two quickly form an unparalleled bond. When Phil's past comes to haunt him and reveal his secrets, will his budding romance with Dan survive?A slow-burn fic with heavy angst and intense plot twists, all chapters will be appropriately tagged and content warned xx





	Frost Dial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everyoneinspaceisgay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyoneinspaceisgay/gifts).



> Dedicated to Kit, who somehow managed to get me to write again.

_“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”_

Mother Teresa

 

         The air in an English winter always seemed to have a frightful chill to it. Frost hit when it was least expected, and Dan was never prepared. As the cold nipped at his nose, and icy wind threatened to strangle him. His scarf lay forgotten on his bedroom floor, amongst various cardboard boxes. His mother always nagged him to bundle up, and despite all of his complaints of the cold, his forgetfulness got the better of him.

         “You’ve brought it on yourself”, she’d probably say if he complained about it later. Grumbling to himself, Dan resorted to wrapping his ash-coloured coat tighter around his body, determined to make it to school on time. He’d only moved into the area a couple of days prior, and he wasn’t familiar with the area yet.

         His mother, Penny, held some sort of job in an accounting firm, and changes in his company’s management meant that she was needed away from the place the family had learned to call home over the last seven years. It was a cushy job that paid well, but that didn’t make the move any easier for Dan or his younger brother. Dan’s old life hadn’t exactly been perfect, but it was familiar. Stable. Moving meant he’d need to start again, and the thought of having to do it alone sent a chill down his spine that was colder than the one caused by the weather.

         A couple of his old friends, PJ and Chris, had surprised him the morning of his move with a box of chocolate and candles, along with a small framed photo of the three of them laughing around in a local arcade. They’d spend their entire allowances trying to beat each other in Pac-Man, and when PJ won both Chris and Dan pretended to be annoyed, but the ruse didn’t last long, and they were soon joking and eating pizza before the night was up.

         Despite that day not being that long ago, it felt so distant to Dan that he doubted whether or not it was real. He did his best to convince himself that they wouldn’t forget about him, but they hadn’t texted him since he left and it was hard not to take it personally. Were Chris there, he’d make a joke about Dan’s lack of object permanence, and only behind closed doors would Chris voice his concerns to PJ. None of that seemed to matter to Dan at the moment, and he shook his head, as though shaking his head would get rid of the self-doubt clouding his judgment.

Determined to make it to school on time, Dan picked up the pace, rushing past the old buildings and farmers market stalls and down a narrow lane, navigating the maze of the small town. Before long, Dan made the mistake of taking a wrong turn when he got distracted by a crow, making his anxiety slowly start to climb in the back of his mind. _Of course you’re going to be late, what a great first impression you’re going to be making._ His sarcastic inner voice did nothing to quell his anxiety, and he felt his stomach start to lurch forward.

         _There’s no point in going to school if you’re going to be late. You might as well give up trying to fit in here, I don’t know why you bothered leaving the house._ Ignoring his negative thoughts, Dan walked along the road until he found some people his age donning the same ashy jacket as him. Reassured by the familiarity, Dan decided to follow them down the town roads until they got to the school. The walk was brief, yet time seemed to tick on for ages.

         Rounding the corner, Dan spotted the school, which was a classic red brick building. The school faced west, and Dan imagined that in the summertime, the light would look beautiful shining through the leaves of the trees bordering the school grounds.

         Dan was quickly interrupted in his thoughts, suddenly finding himself thrown forward as he lost balance on some black ice. Almost in slow motion, the headset he been wearing fell off of his head as his body hit the floor, headset landing on the floor with a muted crack. “Fucks sake,” Dan muttered under his breath, leaning over to pick up his headset. He hadn’t been listening to music, but covering his ears gave him an excuse to not talk to people.

         Peaking over his shoulder, Dan realized that a collection of students outside of the school were now staring at him. _Good going, Dan._ Scrambling to climb the cobbled steps, Dan focused his energy on making it through the door of the school and he did his best to ignore any questioning looks aimed at him.

         The inside of the school smelled of mothballs and photos of each year lined the main corridor’s wall. Dan followed each wooden frame, down the corridor to the oldest photo, which was taken in the 50s. The older photos were worn down and faded, making most of the faces hard to recognize. That year’s school photo had already been taken and was a stark contrast to the older ones. _It doesn’t even matter that I’m here this year,_ Dan thought. _There isn’t even going to be a photo on the wall of me to prove it._

~

 

If how well the first day at a new school had gone could be compared to a race, Dan tripped before he put on his running shoes.  Needless to say, his first day was awful. He’d completely forgotten how to conjugate in German, knocked over a stack of books on his geography teacher’s desk, and ended up spending maths in the bathroom trying not to die of embarrassment.

         Fighting the drops of saltwater that threatened to spill onto his cheeks, Dan headed up the stairs and to his room. The new house backed onto some woods, and though the back garden was small, it felt like the forest itself was part of his home. The end of the garden was overgrown with wildflowers; vines covered an old metal bench as though to root the bench to the very spot. Dan was lucky enough to have a bedroom that looked right out into the aforementioned garden, but the grey weather seemed to just dull any sense of excitement at the change of surroundings. His bedroom was spectacularly average, light blue walls and simple oak flooring, it’s defining feature being the large windows overlooking the garden. His bed frame came with the house, donning an elegant wooden carving made out of a dark, solid oak, with his desk along the wall, facing the window. A chest of drawers was by the door, but it sat empty, all of Dan’s things still being in boxes.

         Homework was waiting for Dan in his backpack, but he couldn’t muster up any energy to get anything done just quite yet. Dan pulled the headphones out of his bag and sighed, putting them on the desk. Dan knew that he wasn’t going to be able to afford to replace them anytime soon, and whilst they had only been a prop earlier, he did actually use them to listen to music. Opening his desk drawer and setting his headphones down inside, he looked over at his scarf, which was still lying on the floor. Grumbling to himself, he walked over and hung it up on the hook next to his door.

         Turning around, Dan looked at all the boxes in his room that were yet to be unpacked and wished he could sort everything out with the wave of his hand. His bed looked all too inviting, despite all of the clothing thrown around on top of it.

         Without warning, the hair on Dan’s arms stood on end, gooseflesh consuming all of his skin. It was as if Jack Frost himself had gripped onto Dan’s shoulders, unrelenting in his transference of cold. Dan was reminded of how it felt when the archetypal bully from his previous school had ripped his jacket off of him in the grasp of winter. Dan had gone home crying, and the jacket reappeared in shreds in a ditch near his school the following day.

         Dan looked all around himself, as though he would be able to find the cause of such an intense chill. “Where is the bloody thermostat,” Dan mumbled to himself, walking over to his heater in an attempt to add more warmth to his room.

         Nobody would be home for at least another hour, his mother at work, and his brother likely finding companionship through a game of football in a nearby park. Dan hoped the time would move fast, dreading the idea of doing nothing for hours. He found that his own brain seldom made friendly company, so he decided to get some work done.

 

~

 

         Sitting at his desk, Dan had reached into his backpack and finally tried to start working on his homework. German had never been his best subject, and Dan quickly found himself chewing on the end of his pencil. Eraser marks soon covered his paper, _calt_ rewritten as _kalt,_ and he found the vein in his temple throbbing as he tried to make sense of the gendered conjugations the language threw at his face. Why a pizza was considered feminine would never make sense to him.

         Looking up to his window, Dan raised his eyebrows and squinted when he saw who was looking back at him. Interlocked with his eyes were the icy blue eyes of a cat. The Siberian cat was balanced perfectly on his windowsill, ears perked in interest at the curly haired boy. Seemingly unbothered, the cat ignored Dan and walked along the side of the house, eventually hoping down and bounding off towards the forest.

         For a moment Dan sat unmoving in his chair, his feet almost rooted to the spot as he thought about the small visitor. His thoughts were quickly interrupted by the bang of the front door opening, followed by his mother shouting from the bottom of the stairs.

         “I’m home! Can you please come downstairs and help me unload the groceries? I just got back from Morrisons,” Penny yelled. Quickly forgetting about the cat, Dan bounded down the stairs to greet his mum, looking forward to being able to talk to someone.

 

~

 

         “I saw a cat today, it was actually walking across my windowsill,” Dan said, his mouth full of mashed potatoes.

         “Oh really? Why didn’t you mention it earlier?” Penny asked, using a paper towel to dot the corners of her mouth when she realized she’d gotten gravy on her lips.

         “I’d completely forgotten about it, besides, I thought you’d want to hear about how school went first.” Dan had been quick to tell his mother about how much he liked his maths teacher, knowing it would stop her from worrying about his first day any further. She didn’t need to know that he had eaten lunch alone, or that the only reason he liked his maths teacher was that she hadn’t noticed that he’d spent the entire lesson in the bathroom.

         His brother, Adrian, had shown up for dinner five minutes late wearing grass-stained trousers and practically bursting with stories about the new friends he’d made. Dan had been grateful that Adrian had made loads of friends, it gave his mother something to get excited over whilst also directing the attention away from himself.  

         After helping clear the dishes, Dan had excused himself from the dining room and gone back upstairs to his room. Usually, he would have gone online, either to watch videos or scroll endlessly through Tumblr, but the internet provider was yet to install the new router in his house. Instead, Dan found himself alone with nothing to do but unpack. Even that seemed like too much, and Dan opted for lying on his bed, trying his best to stay optimistic about his new situation, but quickly the overwhelming feeling of loneliness settled in.

         His shoulders drooped, and his breath steadily became more laboured. It felt like someone was tightening a belt around his ribs, and whispers of “boys don’t cry” did nothing to stop him from experiencing the emotions that had threatened to overwhelm him for days. The framed photo on his desk his friends had given him did nothing to remind him of good times and seemed to only serve as a reminder of the friendships he felt he’d lost.

         Crying didn’t provide the cathartic experience he’d been hoping for, instead draining him of energy, undoing him at his core. Eventually, he allowed himself to put his head down, and before the visitor entered his room, he was fast asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I promise to update within a few days, and I hope to be updating this fic twice a week xx


End file.
